


DOA

by eucatastrophe__x



Series: Love Lives, And Will Live Forever [2]
Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Alternate Universe, Angst, Don't say I didn't warn you, Emotional Roller Coaster, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Gratuitous Sadness, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Paranormal, Suffering, Tearjerker, but really, hopefully
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 12:58:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4836266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eucatastrophe__x/pseuds/eucatastrophe__x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It only took one split second, one unthinking decision, for Richard to lose everything: his life, his future, and Lee.</p><p>But he hoped against hope that one day, the most important of those things would be returned to him.</p><p>All he had to do was wait for that day to arrive.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>(A/N: this is a companion piece to DNR, so reading that first is highly recommended.)</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	DOA

It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

He’d never paid much attention to the ceiling in the shop that he and Lee visited on a close to daily basis, but it was all he could focus on now.

The whole shop was twenty-two tiles wide and eighteen tiles long, each one measuring about thirty centimetres across. They were white, fairly standard looking, filled with concentric squares. If he squinted, there were – yes, six squares per tile. He couldn’t tell if it was their design that was making his vision blur around the edges, fading in and out like bad reception on an old television, or if the haze could be more sensibly attributed to something else. Either way, he wasn’t going to stop looking.

Because if he counted the tiles on the ceiling (twenty-two times eighteen, times seven for the total number of squares, if he counted the edge of each tile as a separate square, which he thought he probably should), it distracted him from the hole in his chest and the blood soaking his jersey and puddling in the space between his spine and the cold floor.

It didn’t hurt that much – nowhere near as much as he had expected it to.

That was how he knew he was really in trouble.

He could hear the sirens in the distance, but he had a sinking feeling that the ambulance was going to come too late.

He thought of Lee and felt a pang in his chest that he was sure had nothing to do with his struggling heart. He would almost certainly have fallen back asleep by now, arms and legs spreadeagled to hold onto the last of the warmth Richard had left behind, flat on his stomach and head turned to one side. His right cheek would be smushed into the pillow, his mouth slightly open, and he would undoubtedly be making the adorable little snuffling noises that always escaped his nose as he dozed off.

Richard wanted to go home.

He wanted to go home, and for everything to go back to the way it had been ten minutes ago.

But he was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen.

Carla was sitting on the floor next to him, and it took a while for him to drag his focus away from the ceiling and realise that she was sobbing with terror and practically hyperventilating.

“Hey,” he rasped, “you’re okay. He’s gone, it’s okay, we’re going to be just fine. Deep breaths, now. You’re doing great. It’s all going to be okay.”

She managed a watery hiccup and he smiled encouragingly, appreciating the weight of her hand in his, each of them anchoring the other.

In the sudden quiet (save for the sirens, still too far away), he considered his thoughts, and concluded that they’d been wrong – everyone who said that when you were near death, your life flashed before your eyes.

Then again, maybe they were right on the money, because all he could see was Lee.

The memories tumbled over each other thick and fast – Lee grinning, laughing, telling Richard he loved him; the thick fan of eyelashes across his cheek as he slept, the dark slick of his hair in the shower, the way he danced around the kitchen in the mornings as he made his coffee and only ever ate his toast sandwiched together, two pieces at a time, and always insisted that Richard help him with his cufflinks, a small moment of silence and calm in their largely disorganised mornings; how ridiculously sexy and professional he looked in a suit (and the way he could shatter that illusion with one inappropriately boyish joke, giggling as Richard just shook his head at him); the intensely smug face that would appear whenever he managed to surprise Richard with a gift or gesture or something else thoughtful and adorable; the extravagant meals he’d prepare for the two of them just because (and the satisfied light in his eyes as Richard devoured them, unable to hold back his groans of enjoyment); the holidays they’d taken and the perfect little oasis that they’d built together, filled with security and happiness and love, love, love. Always love.

Despite everything, he smiled.

But damn, he was tired.

If he just closed his eyes, just for a moment, and concentrated on the memories…

The next thing he knew, he was being loaded into the ambulance, one of the paramedics calling ahead to the hospital – but of the warning, he only caught two words.

Then again, they were the most important two.

“Probable DOA.”

Huh.

His brain was moving sluggishly, and he couldn’t quite grasp the justification for the conclusions that they were reaching – they just didn’t make sense, and seemed completely at odds with reality.

He’d always been a firm believer that naps fixed everything, and it was true this time as much as any other: he felt markedly better than he had done when he was lying on the floor of the shop. He knew that sleep wouldn’t fix the bullet wound in his chest, of course, but the improvement had to be a positive sign, didn’t it? If he was okay now, surely he would only improve once they got him to the hospital? The bullet must have missed his vital organs – and he was sure he’d read about people who’d been shot making a perfect recovery. They mightn’t even operate to remove it (assuming it was still in there – he hadn’t been able to summon the energy to roll over and check for an exit wound) and wouldn’t that be a great party story? He could already see Lee’s face as he joked about it, years down the line, proudly displaying the x-rays and the metal remnants like a trophy that he’d won by chance.

Yes, he was going to be just fine. He chastised himself for jumping to the worst possible conclusions in the immediate aftermath of the incident.

And yet the paramedics didn’t seem to notice him stirring, moving around him with a quiet, grim determination that he found wholly unsettling.

Lee had appeared, too – from somewhere, god knew how or why – and was clutching his hand like it was a life raft. Richard wanted to give him a reassuring smile and say something calming, much like he had with Carla, but he had his head bowed and nothing Richard did got any reaction out of him.

The doctors moved surprisingly slowly when they arrived at the hospital (which, frankly, made him a little concerned for the quality of the care he was about to receive). They put him on a gurney, wheeled him into a small room in the ER, and – irritatingly – sliced his jersey up the middle to get a better look at his chest. (It wasn’t his favourite, not by a long shot, but for god’s sake, they could have just asked him to take it off rather than ruining it.)

“Christ,” one of them sighed – definitely the one in charge, based on the way that everyone else was hovering deferentially, awaiting instructions – “whose idea was it to page me for this? What’s the point of me even being here?”

Richard wanted to protest at his tone – someone needed to send this man back for bedside manner training, surgeon or no, because surely it was obvious that he could hear him and no patient ever wanted to hear themselves being talked about like such an obligation.

And he would have protested – loudly – had he not been so goddamn tired. So he closed his eyes again (just for another brief snooze – the first had worked so well, and he hoped that another would just compound the effect).

That was when it happened.

“Call it,” the doctor said tiredly, like it was the anticlimax of the century and he just wanted to get back to his nap or breakfast or coffee or whatever he’d been doing before being called into the ER to deal with something as trivially mundane as the hole in Richard’s chest.

A pause, some shuffling, and then –

“Time of death, eight fifty-six am.”

Wait – what?

Richard’s eyes flew open.

_Time of death._

But he still didn’t feel dead at all. (He’d felt better in his life, admittedly, but surely _dead_ was a bit of an exaggeration – not to mention one with catastrophic consequences.)

“Is there a next of kin we need to inform?”

“Just a boyfriend, apparently – came in the ambulance. Pace. He’s in the waiting room, about the same age, brown hair, really tall. You’ll spot him.”

Richard considered, for a brief moment, whether that was in fact the most woefully inadequate description of Lee he’d ever heard. Tall with brown hair – Christ, that could cover a fifth of the population. It certainly didn’t do justice to any of the thoroughly lovely attributes that Richard had spent half a decade carefully memorising. But the thought didn’t last long – the mild irritation, mixed with the loved-up euphoria he always felt when he thought about Lee, was swiftly replaced with the horror of his present predicament. Someone was going to go and tell Lee he was dead, when nothing could be further from the truth.

The staff around the gurney dissipated, off to the next crisis (or non-crisis, as it appeared) – so Richard leapt up too, running after the irritated doctor and grabbing his shoulder, wanting to ask why they’d given up on him so quickly when he was clearly alive and moderately okay and what the hell was going on?

He didn’t react.

“Hey,” Richard repeated, louder this time, hand still squeezing, leaning in to practically bellow in the man’s ear.

There was _no way_ he wasn’t hearing him. He wasn’t deaf, and he hadn’t flinched at all under Richard’s touch.

It was almost as if – 

No.

Surely not.

He looked down, only to find that his jersey had knitted itself back together, and was suddenly and confusingly devoid of the blood that had been soaking it seconds ago.

And slowly – very, very slowly, deferring the moment of truth for as long as he possibly could – he turned back to the gurney.

And there he was.

Rather, there _his body_ was.

Cold, grey, pale, unmoving and – undoubtedly – lifeless.

Oh, fuck.

He hadn’t napped in the ambulance at all.

He had died.

He was dead.

In one second – one appalling, earth-shattering second – the full horror of the situation came crashing down around him.

What had he _done?_

Light-headed with the realisation – and, Christ, the _consequences_ – he reached for something solid to cling to, and tried to take deep breaths in an attempt to steady himself – but he couldn’t.

He could open his mouth, at least, but when he tried to inhale – a movement that had come naturally since the day he was born – nothing happened.

Because he was dead.

Oh, he was an idiot of colossal proportions.

He’d done it without thinking, jumping on the kid with the gun who was standing in front of the counter while Carla shovelled all the money in the till into a plastic bag. He was waving the gun around like it was an unfamiliar weight in his hand (and really, Richard thought, that probably should have been his first clue) but he was so intent on the money and the boxes of cigarettes that he was stuffing into his pockets with his free hand that he hadn’t noticed Richard come in.

It was a split second decision; a split second that ruined everything.

And incomprehensibly, in that moment, he didn’t pause to consider the most important thing of all.

Lee.

Oh god, Lee.

He’d launched himself towards the boy, knocking the breath from his lungs as they fell to the floor, both scrambling for dominance, but his finger was still curled around the trigger and he must have flicked the safety off just to prove his point to Carla and –

Yes, it had been a foolish mistake, and he was clearly going to spend a long time – eternity, even – paying for it.

This could not be happening.

It wasn’t how things were supposed to end.

Admittedly, death wasn’t something he’d ever spent a lot of time pondering – but he did know that it wasn’t meant to happen like this. He was meant to have another half-century in him, and drift off peacefully at home with Lee by his side (or, alternatively, with a smile on his face, knowing that after however many days or months or, god forbid, years, he was finally going to see him again.) Maybe it was crazy, after only five years or so, to be so certain that a relationship would last the rest of his and Lee’s natural lives – but when you know, you know.

And he knew.

God help him, he knew.

But this – quietly climbing out of a lifeless body and stumbling through the hospital, desperately pressing his fingers to his neck in search of a non-existent heartbeat – this wasn’t what fiction had promised him. Where was the long tunnel, the white light, the all-encompassing peace?

No, the reality was shaping up to be a staggering letdown, and it was only going to get worse.

Because now he had to stand and watch that same doctor tell Lee that he was dead.

“Mr Pace?” he asked the waiting room at large, and Lee looked up, his expression a confused mix of terror and hope. Somehow, he was still feeling a flicker of optimism prominent enough to manifest itself on his face, and Richard had to look away, knowing what was coming but powerless to stop it, his feet glued to the floor.

“We did everything we could. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Lee’s face crumpled in disbelief.

(As did Richard’s, because – really? He thought that was an acceptable way to tell someone that their boyfriend had died? Not only was it the most ridiculous cliché ever, but the doctor didn’t even attempt to couch it in soothing or sympathetic tones, or take Lee away somewhere private to break the news. He was still wearing that face that told everyone in the vicinity that he’d been torn away from something more important and that this was just A Waste Of His Time. So it was almost gratifying to see, only seconds after Lee stood up, his knees wobble and throat contract and watch as he pitched forward slightly and threw up on the doctor’s shoes. It served him bloody well right. But the mild satisfaction was fleeting, swiftly replaced by the trepidation of knowing that this was only Lee’s initial reaction. The worst was yet to come, and it was going to be brutal.)

Richard stepped out from behind the doctor automatically, moving to Lee like he had some gravitational pull over him and smoothing a hand up and down the length of his spine like he always did when Lee was sick. He’d always found the gesture comforting, and said it helped no matter how terrible he was feeling.

But he didn’t react to Richard’s touch in any way, either.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but that didn’t stop it hurting, a sharp twinge in his gut that felt so much worse than the bullet had. There had been a small (okay, large) irrational part of him that had wondered whether Lee would be able to sense his presence, even if it had become abundantly clear that he couldn’t see him. But the fact that the answer to that hopeful question was apparently a resounding no didn’t stop Richard sticking to him, one arm wound tight around his waist as he followed the doctor back to the ER.

Someone had cleaned the body up, but now that Richard looked closely, his face was a particularly odd colour – unquestionably, really, the colour of death.

And the devastation on Lee’s as he looked down at him was too much to bear.

Christ, surely there was something he could do. Surely there was some way he could come back. Surely there was a window of opportunity – and surely it hadn’t closed in the minutes it had taken Richard to digest what had happened. The world wouldn’t be that cruel, would it?

But the power of positive thinking didn’t work, and nor did lying back down atop the gurney, which had to be high on the list of the strangest sensations ever. He felt himself moulding back into his body, two newly separate entities fusing into one again, but he couldn’t get himself to move or his heart to start or his lungs to start filling with air. The only upside was that he could sort of hold Lee’s hand again, savouring the sensation of the two of them physically interacting (in a way, at least) – because it was the last time he would ever experience it.

And then, inevitably, the godawful permanence of the consequences of his actions in the shop crashed down on him again.

That was when Lee started to sob.

It was animalistic, gut-wrenching, each gasping wail sounding like it had been ripped involuntarily from his chest. He was squeezing Richard’s hand so hard his knuckles had turned white, and Richard had never hated himself quite so much before. Oh, if only he could have the last hour over again. If only he could fix this.

But he couldn’t.

Nothing he did helped, and he fluttered around the room anxiously, always drifting back to Lee, who hadn’t moved from his seat (and, if he had his way, looked like he never would again). He tried wrapping his arms around him, resting a chin on his shoulder, running his hands through his hair (Lee had always adored that, it always made him purr, and Richard loved the blissed-out look the gesture always earned him – except now it got nothing), gripping his arms hard enough (in any other circumstances, at least) to leave bruises, even squeezing onto his lap. He kissed every inch of Lee’s face and neck and hands that he could reach. And he’d said his name so many hundred times that it had stopped sounding like his name at all, desperately hoping that he would somehow hit on a pitch or volume that would be audible. But he’d shouted it loud enough to make his own ears ring, and whispered it in a small puff with his cheek pressed to Lee’s, and everything in between – and still nothing.

This was how it was going to be, then.

Forever.

It was a daunting prospect that Richard’s mind had difficulty grasping.

But he knew he wouldn’t be able to walk away and leave Lee to deal with his grief alone, even if watching without being able to touch him or communicate with him was probably going to hurt more than the death had in the first place, and would probably kill him all over again. They’d been talking about their forever for years, after all; Richard just hadn’t expected it to go like this.

No, he would stay – for as long as it took, he would stay. And one day, Lee would come back to him.

(He didn’t let himself consider the alternative, even for a second: that he was doomed to wander around the earth for the rest of eternity, only to have Lee pass on to – well, wherever it was that everyone else went – without their paths crossing again.)

For someone who was unquestionably the love of his life, he could do that much. It wasn’t a lot, but it was everything he had to offer – and maybe, despite everything, he would be able to figure out some way to reach Lee from time to time, let him know he was still around and still loved him (would always love him) and it was all going to be okay in the end.

But today was not one of those times.

“Richard,” Lee wheezed, his voice hoarse from overuse and thick with tears, “oh, _Richard.”_

“I’m here,” he screamed, fingers digging into Lee’s shoulders desperately, “I’m still here.”

_Look at me._

_Please._

But he didn’t. He most likely never would again.

Lee sat there for an hour with Richard’s body, surrounded by silent machines and crying mostly silent tears (the wailing that he’d begun with had petered off into something slightly more dignified, but no less painful for either of them) until a nurse peeked around the corner and told him they needed the room. Richard was more than a little offended at that – it wasn’t compassionate in the slightest, and Lee clearly needed more time. He would have made a formal complaint if there was anyone in the building who could hear him. But – and it didn’t come as a surprise – Lee didn’t put up a fight, opting instead to kiss his face and lips one last time.

“I love you,” he whispered, and Richard felt his face crumple, something agonising solidifying in his chest where his beating heart used to be.

“I love you,” Richard echoed, his voice cracking on the last word, “god, Lee, I love you, I’ll always love you, I swear.”

But that promise, like everything else, fell on deaf ears.

Richard followed Lee out of the hospital, trailing a few steps behind as he walked and walked and walked, rubbing his red eyes periodically to smear away the wetness – until they got to the overpass, where Lee walked up to the railing and stopped. He stood in silence for several long minutes, shoulders curling inwards and head bowed, and then –

“I don’t think I can do this, Rich,” he whispered. “Maybe I’m crazy for loving you this much when we only had a few years, but I honestly don’t think I can go on without you. Could you forgive me for that?”

Richard felt like the ground had given way beneath him – but at the same time, he understood perfectly.

He had been enamoured with Lee since the first time he’d laid eyes on him. It hadn’t been the most auspicious of starts – running down a new colleague only seconds after walking in the door – but god, did the man have a charming smile. Richard wanted to make him smile like that again.

It took twenty-six days for him to realise that he had fallen in love – but another two hundred and ninety-four for him to summon up the courage to act on it.

Kissing Lee for the first time had been intoxicating, far more so than the champagne he’d been drinking all night, and when Lee had kissed him back, he felt like a fool for taking so damn long to speak up. Against that background, quitting the job because Lee wouldn’t date a co-worker felt like the easiest decision in the world.

He’d find more work sooner or later, but he might never find a love (call it whatever – that innate magnetism that had pushed them together over and over again since the day they’d first met) like this again in his lifetime.

So he’d taken the leap, and never once regretted it, because the years they’d had together had been nothing short of exquisite.

And he knew that had their roles been reversed, he too would be standing on the overpass, contemplating a life without Lee and concluding that it was too much to bear.

And if the last couple of hours had been anything to go by, he would spend the rest of eternity thinking about how he should have done things differently: what if he’d not been so bloody fussy about having milk in his tea (Lee was more than happy with black coffee, he knew that, and yet still he’d insisted on going out)? What if he’d taken longer to get dressed – or, better yet, had a shower first? What if he’d stopped to stroke and talk to the cat he’d come across down the street, lying on the steps and enjoying the morning sunlight, instead of just smiling at the sight and moving on?

And what if – Christ, and this was the most painful of all – what if he’d just let the boy leave the shop with his plastic bag full of money, knowing (as he did) that Carla was unhurt and insurance would cover the loss and that objectively there was no real reason for him to intervene at all?

_What if, what if, what if?_

But it was too late, because now they were here and Lee was staring down at the traffic below and Richard couldn’t do anything to make him realise that this was a terrible idea.

Lee was shaking – it had started in the ambulance and hadn’t stopped, but Richard was fairly sure he hadn’t even noticed – and it was only natural for Richard to step closer, his arms slipping around Lee’s waist and his chin on his shoulder.

“I would forgive you,” he conceded in a whisper, “but I know you, and I know you can get through this. It’s going to be okay. It doesn’t end here.”

They stood there like that for a few long moments before Lee took a huge, steadying sigh and stepped away from the edge, clearly having concluded that he couldn’t do it, not now.

“Fucking hell, Richard,” he sighed, and Richard couldn’t have agreed more, relief coursing through his bloodless veins. Thank Christ that was over.

But it was only the beginning.

**

Richard had the dubious privilege of attending his own funeral. It was a small service, just family, close friends and colleagues. The front pews of the church were full, so he sat cross-legged on the floor between them, wondering if this was as strange as things were going to get as he hovered in the shadow of the land of the living.

Lee was wearing a suit and one of his favourite shirts, a shade of blue that highlighted the colour of his eyes so well that it made Richard weak in the knees every time he put it on. Richard, of course, was grossly underdressed, in his old misshapen jersey and the sweats that he only ever wore at home and down to the shop. He’d come to hate the jersey in question – it had been involved in the most horrific experiences of his life (and afterlife), after all, and he was reminded of them every time he looked down. It was a blessing, of sorts, that he couldn’t see himself in the mirror.

Lee had held it together for the first fifteen or so minutes of the service – until he got up to speak himself. 

“I’m Lee, and Richard was the love of my life.”

He started off in a light-hearted tone that even earned a few genuine – if sympathetic – laughs as he recounted how they’d fallen in love.

“I think I knew,” he admitted, “that I was in trouble the first time I saw him smile.” Richard remembered him making that confession, not long after they got together, and that made him smile again.

“But I had this stupid rule about not getting involved with people I worked with, so I wasted a lot of energy trying to convince myself that I didn’t feel anything for him. A couple of months later, I was working on this terrible project that had been giving me so much grief that I’d barely slept for weeks. And I remember him coming over just as we were finishing it, even though he wasn’t on my team and it was nothing to do with him, and just giving me this huge, congratulatory hug. I think I realised then that I wasn’t going to get any better. But I was still too afraid to make the first move. Everyone at work could see that something was going to happen sooner or later, and they were putting money on when we’d finally get together. And then, once we finally did –”

Richard groaned, burying his head in his hands. Lee was clearly never going to get tired of this story.

Not that he could really begrudge him telling it now.

Tom, clearly not willing to give up on a senior employee who’d quit in the heat of the moment – and at the Christmas party, no less – had called his mobile the next morning. Richard had been extremely preoccupied at the time (specifically, there was a spot he’d hit last night, his tongue buried deep inside Lee, that had resulted in a squeaking gasp in a register higher than he had thought possible, and he was very anxious to find it again) but by the third round of ringing, even Lee was swiftly making the transition from turned on to irritated.

“What?” Richard had barked down the phone, mouthing “Tom” to Lee when he raised his eyebrows expectantly. “No, I’m sorry, I’m not going to change my mind. Like I said last night, another opportunity has come up.”

Tom asked for details. Of course he did. And Richard was love-drunk and delirious and didn’t really give two fucks what he told his now former boss (they had a very relaxed office, so it wasn’t as if it would shake Tom too much – it wouldn’t be the first time something like this had been shared around the entire workplace).

“Can I describe it?” he repeated for Lee’s benefit. “Well, yes. Yes, I can. It’s six foot four and its name rhymes with ‘free’ and it’s in my bed right now.”

Lee let out an indignant squawk, blood rushing to his face, and at the other end of the line Tom started to laugh, clearly recognising his voice. “Well, well. Suddenly it all makes sense.”

Lee was still purple with embarrassment and shaking his head by the time Tom finally hung up, having accepted that there was no way he was going to be able to convince Richard to come back – not when there was something like this at stake.

“I can’t believe you said that to our boss,” he moaned, and Richard just grinned some more.

“Technically, he’s not my boss anymore.”

“You’re completely insane, you know.”

“You love it.”

“I do,” Lee conceded, scooting closer, pushing an obliging Richard onto his back, straddling him and leaning down to press their lips together again, “and I love _you.”_

This time, the kisses were soft and slow, a quieter version of the intensity that had blindsided them both the night before, and Richard couldn’t stop smiling. (There had been a moment – only a moment – when he had wondered whether he shouldn’t have been quite so brutally honest about his feelings in the middle of sex, but Lee’s response had more than silenced any fears he may have had about them not being reciprocated.)

Lee pulled away with a final teasing flick of his tongue just as Richard was starting to wonder if he was going to pass out from a lack of oxygen.

“So,” he drawled, the combination of the exaggerated accent and kiss-swollen lips positively sinful, “you said something last night about taking me out for dinner.”

Richard just grinned up at him indulgently. “Are you hungry?”

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” On cue, his stomach gurgled impatiently.

“Well, I’m guessing that you want to eat before tonight, so I can’t do you dinner this time, but there’s a café that does good brunch a couple of blocks away, if you’re game for that.”

“Do they do pancakes?”

“Mm.”

“Okay,” Lee told him, “you’ve twisted my arm. I’ll let you take me out for brunch.”

“As long as it doesn’t get me a black mark against my name for doing everything backwards.”

“Oh, even if it did, I’m sure you could work out a way to get rid of it.” 

They showered together again, long and languorous, unable to bring themselves to get out until they’d used up all the hot water – and even then, it took them a long time to get ready, because Richard hadn’t been able to resist pushing Lee back against the sink, tilting his chin up with one hand and claiming the largely unmarked expanse of his neck with his mouth.

He licked away the faint soapy taste to get to the man underneath, nosing the hollow beneath his ear as he kissed and caressed and sucked and bit gently, feeling Lee’s pulse fluttering under his tongue.

“Christ, you’re gorgeous,” he mumbled, suddenly quite unable to comprehend that Lee was here, letting him do this, telling him he loved him, and making all the promises Richard had ever wished for over the last year. Lee’s breathless little laugh reverberated in his head as his hands skimmed over Richard’s back, still wet from the shower, one rubbing up and down his spine while the other settled on the dip of his waist, and his torso arched into Richard’s touch.

It was only when Lee’s stomach rumbled again that Richard stopped, grinning at those bright eyes and bashful little smile.

“Come on, let’s get you dressed.”

There was something about the sight of Lee wearing one of his shirts (his own stank of smoke and alcohol and sweat and all the other hallmarks of a Friday night out), all fresh-faced and damp-haired and barefoot, the faintest shadow of stubble marking his jaw, that made Richard’s stomach twist with happiness.

It looked like their future.

And he loved it.

“Just let me go and grab the newspaper,” he told Lee, who was reaching for his shoes, “and then we can go.”

He pulled open the door to the apartment, and then he stopped dead.

On the floor in front of him was a box that was unmistakeably from a certain high-end shop down the road – one that Richard would eye from time to time, but he had never had enough money to throw around to be able to justify any of its products.

“Lee,” he said slowly, “there is a case of extremely expensive champagne outside my door.”

“Happy holidays from…someone?” Lee suggested, appearing behind him with one shoe on, just as perplexed. “Look, there’s a note.” Sure enough, a folded piece of paper was stuck to the front of the box, held in place by a gaudy ribbon entirely at odds with the quiet sophistication of its contents.

Richard plucked the card from the box, reading aloud. “Dear Lee and Richard – a token of my vehement appreciation. The stakes were upped in the last month and I was the only one game enough to put money on you getting your act together before the end of the year. I wish you both all the best. Merry Christmas – Tom.”

“Unbelievable,” Lee laughed, shaking his head, “he was in on it the whole time.”

“In on what exactly?” Richard asked, confused – and that was when Lee had told him about the betting ring. It explained a lot: the covert glances and smiles every time he and Lee were spotted talking, and the way that hushed conversations sometimes stopped when he walked into the room.

“They all knew? That this was going to happen?”

“Sooner or later? Yeah, apparently so.”

Richard quite liked the idea that they had been so obviously attracted to each other that everyone else could see it. (The thought of people putting money on when they would finally confess to each other was more than a little mortifying, but – as seemed to be the case that day – he couldn’t bring himself to care.)

“So, remind me,” he said thoughtfully, “when do you leave for Christmas?”

“Tuesday.”

“Any plans in particular between now and then?” Richard was heading off on the same day – which meant that they had more than 72 glorious, potentially uninterrupted hours stretching out in front of them. He knew exactly how he wanted to spend them, provided that Lee was amenable. Even if he was sort of hungry, the prospect of food was sinking lower and lower down the priority list, replaced with mental images of Lee on his back, knees pressed to his chest and damp hair sticking to his forehead as Richard fucked him relentlessly.

Food could definitely wait.

“Actually, yes – I do have plans,” Lee said with a serious expression, “and now that you’ve reminded me, I seem to have gone off the whole brunch thing.”

Richard’s confidence wavered – but only for a second.

“Instead, I think I need you to tell me where you keep your glasses, and I need to open one of these bottles in lieu of food, and then I need you to get me naked and get back to exactly what you were doing before Tom rang. And I think we should probably turn our phones off for good measure. How does that sound?”

It sounded like they were on exactly the same wavelength.

“Let me get the corkscrew.”

Thankfully, Lee didn’t go into anywhere near that level of detail about the morning in question in his eulogy – but he certainly said enough to earn laughs from Tom and all their other colleagues who knew how the relationship had developed and remembered the way that it was the talk of the office for weeks after Lee went back in January. (After organising the wine delivery, Tom had sent out a hilariously obnoxious company-wide email to gloat about his success, and congratulatory messages had flooded in for the rest of the day, as they discovered after they finally turned their phones on again.) But Richard knew exactly what Lee was thinking – the details of those first few days, in particular, were seared into his brain as well, memories that he loved to take out and consider on a regular basis.

“And – well, you all know this, obviously, but he was amazing. He was the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. He would have done anything in the world for me, and for any of you, and I know that he’s helped a number of people here out of some tough times. Fewer of you will know this – though you probably won’t be surprised – but he was also the biggest romantic you will ever meet. When I sat down to write this, I spent a long time thinking about the things that Richard has done for me over the years – but I realised that if I detailed every one of his big romantic gestures, you’d be here for the next month.”

More bolstering laughter, and a slightly self-satisfied smile from Richard. He was intensely glad that everything had been absorbed and appreciated and helped Lee to understand just how much Richard loved him.

“One that does stand out, though, is the time that I missed a workshop and tasting event run by this visiting French Michelin-starred chef because of work commitments. He knew how disappointed I was, so he took matters into his own hands.”

Tom had been working him into the ground on an urgent project with a rapidly approaching deadline. He had come home every night and sobbed with exhaustion and frustration – but never quite as hard as the night that Tom informed him that he couldn’t have the night off the following Friday, when he had been planning to go to the workshop. He’d been talking about it for months, and had bought his ticket within seconds of them becoming available. Tom had known that, but the project was worth so much to the firm that everything else came second.

It had broken Richard’s heart, so he’d done the only thing he could think of – gone to Tom behind Lee’s back and organised some time off, starting the weekend after the project deadline.

Lee had dragged himself through the door on the Friday night after they finished it, and Richard had bundled him right back out again, telling him that they were going on a date. He’d left work early to pack for both of them and their suitcases were hidden in the boot of the car.

“Not tonight, babe, I’m shattered,” he protested, but Richard wasn’t having a bar of it. The fact that Lee had dozed off en route to the airport just made things easier.

“Wake up,” Richard said softly, squeezing his shoulder until he was met with a bleary-eyed gaze. “Where are we?”

Richard didn’t answer – just handed him the tickets.

It took a few long seconds for it to sink in – but suddenly, Lee was wide awake and looking extremely startled.

“Rich, what – why – how are – did you –”

“I know how crushed you are about missing that workshop,” he began, “and I know this might be a poor second-best to actually meeting him, but we are going to Paris for a week and we are going to go to every starred restaurant in the city. I’ve cleared it with Tom, and we’re flying business class so you have enough room to stretch out and sleep, and we’re going to have a holiday because – well, love, I know you desperately need one.”

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried when he told me,” Lee finished, “but that holiday was probably the best of my life.”

Richard agreed wholeheartedly. The spectacular food aside, the whole week had been blissful: sleeping late in their extravagant hotel room, sharing the colossal bathtub, roaming the streets being tourists and not returning until the early hours of the morning. (He would be lying if he said he hadn’t used the trip to take advantage of his knowledge that Lee got all weak-kneed when he heard him speak in French, something which had absolutely guaranteed earth-shattering sex every single night (and most of the mornings, and at various stages in between) of their stay.)

“And then, of course, there’s the fact that he quit a great job to be with me. Sorry, Tom – I know you hate coming out second best,” he added, to yet more laughter, and Tom raised a hand in acknowledgment, a broad grin on his face.

Richard decided it was a good eulogy if people were genuinely – if slightly sadly – laughing.

But listening to Lee talk about him – all those heartfelt words that revealed, in case there had ever been any doubt, just how much he cherished him – was a special kind of devastating, made worse by the fact that Richard couldn’t wrap his arms around him and hold him and whisper reassuring words in his ear and have Lee feel and hear him.

“But he’d known, even then – hell, maybe before I did – that what we had, and what we were going to have, was real and precious and something that shouldn’t be squandered. And I loved him – I _love_ him –more than I have ever loved anyone or anything else. We may have only had a few years, but they were the happiest of my life, and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. And I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that if this hadn’t happened, if we weren’t all here today, he and I would be spending the rest of our lives together. And –”

Those last few points seemed to have had a particularly profound effect on him. He pitched forward, palms flat to the lectern to steady himself, and took three huge, sucking breaths in a bid to flatten out his wavering voice.

“And he changed my life. He has made me the person I am today, and I honestly have no idea how I’m going to go on without him.”

He stumbled through the rest of the eulogy, somehow managing to stay coherent despite the tears that were now sliding down his face and dripping off his chin and the way that he would hiccup in the middle of every sentence, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the church by the time he’d finished.

Except for Richard’s.

He wanted to cry – god, more than anything. But it had become abundantly clear, listening to Lee speak, that the ability to do so was something that had disappeared completely when he died. (He’d wondered, when it didn’t happen at the hospital, whether it was just going to be more difficult, but the eulogy should have left him a sobbing puddle on the ground and yet there he was, distressed beyond belief but with nothing to show for it.) He could feel that prickling heaviness in his nose and behind his eyes that was usually the precursor to tears, but even when he squeezed his eyes closed, nothing was forthcoming.

It would have been so cathartic to cry, but even that had been taken away from him.

He didn’t linger after the funeral – he’d had his fill (if there was such a thing) of seeing their friends embrace Lee while he shook. And he decided it was definitely too fucking weird to hang around the crematorium and watch his body go up in flames, so he walked the whole way home and sat on the steps out the front of their building until Lee returned alone, so folded in on himself with grief that he was practically bent double, and clutching an urn to his chest.

He spent several hours pacing the apartment with it, setting it down on different surfaces only to pick it up again with a frown and a shake of his head. Eventually, he settled on the top corner of the bookshelf – the patch of the lounge that saw the last sliver of sun in winter and looked out across the city – and made sure that the front of the urn was facing outwards, presumably so that Richard could continue to admire the view.

“One day,” he promised it, “we’ll be together again. And you can just sit there until that day arrives.”

Oh, of course.

Richard remembered the conversation well. Lee had turned to him with an anxious and earnest face and blurted it out, apropos of nothing, while they were watching TV one quiet evening.

“Richard?”

“Hmm?”

“What happens if one of us dies?” he asked, all in a rush, the words tumbling each other so fast that Richard had to ask him to repeat himself.

“What do you mean, what happens? That’s sort of the end of the story, isn’t it?”

“Like – what do you want? What do you think your funeral to be like? Would you rather be buried or cremated? I feel like I know you inside out – in the good way, though, not the bored way – but I don’t know that.”

“Don’t be so bloody morbid,” Richard grinned, ruffling his hair lovingly, “we’re not going to die.”

“Humour me,” Lee pleaded, and he realised that he wasn’t really joking – there was a definite undercurrent of seriousness there.

“Alright,” he said indulgently, then realised he had absolutely no idea.

“I guess… I think I would rather be cremated. Spending all eternity in a box underground makes me feel a bit claustrophobic. But then I have no idea where the ashes should be scattered, either. In the sea? Where do you normally scatter ashes?”

“I kind of like the idea of the sea,” Lee confessed, “and I think – what about –”

“That place we rented that summer?” Richard blurted inarticulately. Thankfully, Lee knew exactly what he meant. The hazy look on his face was a pretty clear indication that he was remembering the same things that Richard was: the blazing sun, the roar of the sea (audible from the bedroom of the house they rented, looking out across the beach), lazy evenings eating and drinking on the sand, lazier nights tangled in the thin sheets and each other, and a bone-deep bliss that lingered long after they returned home. 

“Right, that’s settled, then,” Richard concluded with a nod.

“What – both of us?”

“If it’s where you want to be, it’s where I want to be, too.”

A single tear slid down Lee’s cheek and he pulled Richard closer, burying his face in his neck as Richard stroked his hair soothingly.

“We can make wills, if you want – spell all of these things out, so there’s no confusion… if anything were to happen to either of us.”

“I’d like that,” Lee said, resurfacing and offering a small smile for the first time, letting Richard lean in and kiss the salty tracks off his face affectionately.

“I’ve got to say, Lee, this has been the grimmest Saturday night conversation I’ve had in a while.”

“I just need to know,” he pleaded, “just in case.”

Well, it had certainly been a pragmatic call. Just look at them now: Richard dead and gone, ashes stuffed into an urn that would wait patiently on the bookshelf until there was another to join it. Someone would take them to that beach and out to sea and scatter them both, rising and falling with the wind and waves, and they would finally be together again.

In the interim, though, Lee opted to get inked, carrying the memory of Richard around with him in a different way.

Richard had followed him to the tattoo parlour that first day, and had been grateful to the man they came to know as Craig for turning him away, not wanting to put a permanent brand on him when he was so visibly unstable and incoherent with grief. But the idea hadn’t faltered or faded in any way, and he watched Lee pore over ideas for many a sleepless before finally deciding on a quote for his forearm tattoo. He adored the final design as much as Lee and Craig did, and agreed that the quote was fitting – more fitting, even, than Lee had realised.

_Love lives, and will live forever._

All the same, Richard decided that it was rather unsettling to watch someone get the date of your death inked onto their skin.

But he couldn’t really complain about this one – not least because the consequences were so minimal, especially when compared to Lee’s devastating original plan. He peeked over Craig’s shoulder with interest as he got to work, but even the whir of the gun didn’t faze Lee, sitting there serenely, Richard’s pea coat (which Lee had claimed and barely taken off since the day he’d died) spread out over the extra chair as though he’d come to watch.

Well, he had.

Lee just didn’t know it.

Just like he didn’t know that when he walked home, wrapped in the coat, Richard was by his side – like he always had been, and like he always would be.

That afternoon, not long after he took the bandages off his arm with a sad little smile on his face, the cat came back.

Cleo belonged to their neighbours, but you’d never have guessed it, judging by the amount of time she spent on Richard and Lee’s couch. She was a Siamese, elegant yet needy, with very clear ideas about who she did and didn’t like. Her owners went away a lot and didn’t shower her in the attention she needed – so instead, she would make the jump across the balcony and get it from Richard in spades.

“Who’s my beautiful girl?” Richard would croon, unable to help himself, and she would reply with one of her strange, throaty meows. The conversations could go on for a long time – she was always happy to chat back for as long as he wanted to coo and stroke her. He would frequently let her snooze on his lap or chest or curled into his side – as soon as he settled anywhere, she would be there, meowing expectantly and waiting for him to make room for her. And he’d been unable to resist buying cat food – usually the most extravagant he could find – in an attempt to lure her away from her home more often. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, it had been working very well, even if she always left by nightfall for her second dinner.) And Lee – well, he would just shake his head in mock despair.

“Cleo,” Richard murmured, out of habit, and was astonished to find that she looked over at him. Letting out the happy chirp she always greeted him with, she jumped onto the couch and made herself at home, a rumbling purr emanating from her chest in seconds as Richard started to pat her, just like he always did, completely unable to comprehend what was happening.

“Who’s a gorgeous girl?” he asked her – just in case – and, unbelievably, she answered him.

“Oh, is that right?”

And again.

He got up to eight meows before Lee appeared, book in hand and frowning in confusion. He squinted at Cleo and stepped closer, closer, before sitting down very gingerly on the couch next to her.

She didn’t move.

Despite her love for Richard, she had never warmed to Lee. He was more of a dog person – and somehow she could sense that, and had always given him a very wide berth. Every time she arrived, she would roam the apartment looking for Richard, and if he wasn’t home, she would leave again – even if Lee was stretched out on the couch with a book and a blanket, a picture-perfect place for her to nap. (It was several months before Lee had confessed this to Richard, who had been labouring under the impression that she loved them both equally because he’d never seen the way she behaved with Lee.) And if she was occupying the couch herself, if Richard wasn’t there patting her and Lee tried to sit down, she would get up and stalk off.

Only this time, she didn’t.

“Cleo,” Lee said softly, clearly trying to mimic Richard’s usual affectionate tone, and she raised her head to look at him, letting out another of her slightly abrasive meows. It was the first time Richard had ever seen her willingly interact with Lee. Very slowly, he reached out a hand to stroke the top of her head – and she let him, pushing up into the touch and meowing again.

“You miss him too, I know,” Lee told her, settling against the back of the couch and opening his book again – albeit disbelievingly – missing the way that she kept turning her head between him and Richard like she always did when she was perched between the pair of them.

“Good girl,” Richard cooed at her, curling his fingers to scratch under her chin. She purred happily, arching her neck for more, a movement that would have looked incredibly strange to Lee if he’d not had his nose in his book.

But he did, so he didn’t notice at all.

**

It was seventy-four days before the dreams started.

Richard hadn’t been expecting them, and it startled him out of his usual nocturnal reminiscing when Lee rolled over, an inarticulate moan escaping through parted lips.

It was followed by another, and this one sounded like Richard’s name.

He knew, by this stage, how Lee sounded and looked and moved when he was having a nightmare – but this was no nightmare. And sure enough, when he thrashed in the sheets again, they slipped down further, stretching over his hips and emphasising the bulge of his cock.

His _hard_ cock.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise – he was still human, after all, and his body clearly had needs, even if he wasn’t willing to recognise them while he was awake.

And even in his sleep, his hand knew what to do.

He moaned a third time as he grasped his cock, already leaking slightly, and settled into a steady, unconscious pace.

It made Richard feel sick to his stomach.

There had always been something so intoxicating about watching Lee get himself off – Richard liked demanding that he do it while he watched, or while he tormented Lee with a twisting finger or tongue – but not like this. This was upsetting and awful and just plain _wrong._

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave.

He could pinpoint the exact moment when Lee woke up, because his breath caught in his throat as he realised that he’d only been dreaming and what his hand had been doing as he slept.

He didn’t stop, but reached his free hand out across the bed for the sleeve of the shirt that was poking out from under Richard’s pillow. He’d been cycling through them extremely slowly: the day was going to come when they all smelled more musty than anything else, but at least for now, Lee clearly thought they still held traces of Richard.

He crumpled the shirt into a ball and lifted it to his nose and mouth like he was trying to suffocate himself, breathing deeply to inhale the smell, and did his best to continue. And Richard straddled him, ghosting kisses over his face and neck and collarbones, doing his best to help him to get there, but no – his face was twisting in pain and frustration, his hand slowing and then stopping entirely. When Richard looked down, he realised that Lee had gone completely soft.

Lee rolled onto his side, curling into a ball, and started to cry.

“Baby, please don’t,” Richard murmured, aghast, shuffling closer and pressing his body to Lee’s. But it didn’t make any difference – nothing he did could – and Lee just shook with quiet emotion, muffling his hiccupping tears in the fabric until he finally fell asleep again just as the sky was starting to lighten.

And Richard – well, he just lay there, paralysed with guilt and regret.

This was clearly just how the rest of eternity was going to go: he would think that things couldn’t get any worse, but every so often, something else would take him by surprise, leaving him feeling like he was dying all over again.

The last time they’d had sex had been less than twelve hours before Richard’s life came to a crashing halt. It hadn’t been perfunctory – god, fucking Lee could never be remotely mundane – but it hadn’t exactly been the long-winded task of memorisation that it should have been. They’d both had long days and Lee had initially said he just wanted to go to sleep early, but somewhere along the line that goal had been abandoned. It had had a lot to do with the idle way that he’d been caressing the back of Richard’s neck, which had sparked something in the pit of Richard’s stomach and led to him pushing Lee back into the couch – straddling his lap and plundering his mouth while those fingers squeezed his hips and traced the ridges of his spine – before moving to the bed.

Needless to say, it hadn’t been the early night they’d expected.

But if he’d known then that it was the last time he’d ever feel Lee fall apart around him, he would have made sure that it lasted hours more.

He would have spent longer mapping the constellation of freckles spanning Lee’s neck and chest and back, treasuring and pressing his lips to each in turn.

(The day that he couldn’t quite recall the feeling of Lee’s shoulders under his hands, all sinew and hard muscle beneath silk-soft skin, would be a sad one indeed. It was yet to arrive, but that didn’t stop him dreading it anyway.)

He would have savoured the taste of Lee’s mouth, the way their lips fit together without trying, and the effort and energy that Lee always poured into kissing him, like the fate of the world rested on his ability to make him moan.

He would have wrung out of Lee every sound possible, all those gasps and whimpers and moans that he made during the varying stages of foreplay and fucking that all meant something slightly different.

He would have drawn things out until he made Lee beg, those soft little pleas that he had always been incapable of resisting, that somehow always got him harder and hornier than he thought possible.

He would have catalogued the way Lee looked with his head between Richard’s legs, the sucking, unrelenting heat of his mouth, the way that he would squeeze his hips and ass as he went to town hands-free, and the vibrating, whining moan he would make when he tasted his come.

He would have done a better job of memorising the way he could get Lee to tremble, shivers rippling the length of his spine as he buried his face in the pillows, grinding down against the mattress as Richard scissored him open with harsh, deliberate movements and keening long and high when he introduced his tongue, every flick and thrust making his body jerk desperately like a puppet on a string.

And he would have cherished the feeling of being inside Lee, that hot, clenching tightness, and the fold of Lee’s long legs quivering around his waist and the bright flush of his cheeks and the murmured words that neither of them could ever contain and the looks of astonishment and love and pure, unadulterated pleasure that would linger on his face long after it was over.

Yes, he would have done things differently – longer, slower, deeper, _more_ – just to make sure every last detail was permanently imprinted on his brain.

And the sad fact was that it had been a while since they’d mixed things up. Lee liked (well, maybe that was an understatement) being fucked by Richard, and Richard certainly had no objections to doing the fucking, but all the same, it was so intensely satisfying to be filled with Lee’s cock and the hot rush of come that followed. He remembered the sensations now, but the finer details were already taking on a slightly dreamlike quality.

He didn’t want to forget that.

He didn’t want to forget _anything._

And neither did Lee’s subconscious, based on the way it kept dredging more memories up for him to consider when he was asleep and vulnerable, almost like it was a challenge.

It was another several months before any of the dreams (which had begun to occur on a close to weekly basis) were productive.

Richard was almost glad, in a way, that Lee could find an infinitesimal moment of pleasure in the relentless grey march that had become his life – but on the whole, really, he wasn’t glad at all, because watching Lee’s face crumple and hearing him sob Richard’s name in agony as he came was soul-destroying, a steel fist clamped around his heart.

Richard couldn’t stay to watch – he didn’t want to see more nights unfold like this – and it marked the last time he watched Lee sleep for quite a while.

Thankfully, there was someone else he was more than a little curious to spend extended periods of time with in the meantime.

It had been surprisingly easy to get into the prison the first time – what had taken the longest was prowling the labyrinthine corridors, eyeing the occupant of each cell in turn until he found Ethan. Even the jumpsuit and the buzz cut and the tattoos covering his neck and the backs of his hands couldn’t detract from his thoroughly youthful appearance, round-faced and wide-eyed and full-lipped with only the vaguest hint of stubble. He was twenty, but he looked more like a fourteen year old playing a macabre game of dress up.

It was interesting to study him now, since their first meeting had lasted less than a minute, beginning with a full body tackle and ending with his horrified face and the sound of his shoes on the tiles as he ran from the shop, leaving Richard to bleed out on the floor. Richard had paid so little attention then that he didn’t even think he would have been able to pick him out of a police line-up. Now, at least, he had all the time in the world.

He wrote huge numbers of letters – to both Lee and Richard – but never sent any of them. Richard wished he would. He thought they might help – they were certainly a vast improvement on the tone that Ethan had taken at the restorative justice meeting, leaving Lee looking like he wanted to reach across the table and throttle him. He’d painted himself as a victim, apparently still too young and immature to understand what Lee was trying to tell him: that he alone had made the choices that left them in the positions they found themselves now (Ethan in a jail, Richard in an urn, and Lee in the cage of grief that he’d built around himself). And as a result, Lee hadn’t been able to find any semblance of closure – which, of course, was the reason he’d agreed to the restorative justice meeting in the first place.

No, Richard couldn’t find it in himself to pity Ethan at all.

He’d sat with Lee at the sentencing – grateful for the black mood he was radiating, because at least it meant there were spare seats next to him in the public gallery – and didn’t look at Ethan or the lawyers or the judge, but at Lee’s face. He’d tucked himself sideways in the seat, one hand rubbing Lee’s back, up between his shoulder blades, and the other what he wished was a comforting weight on his thigh.

He didn’t realise it was over until everyone started to stand up.

It was done.

Ethan was going to stay in jail – not for as long as Lee wanted him to, Richard knew, but for a while. 

Ethan had spent that night lying flat on his bunk, staring at the ceiling and listening intently – and only when the last whispers of conversation had been replaced with snores did he let himself cry, burying his face in the pillow to muffle the sounds.

But even then, Richard thought, collecting his emotions and sifting through them methodically, he still couldn’t find a shred of sympathy.

Then again, he was dead – could he really be expected to?

**

Two weeks to the day after the sentencing, Richard’s birthday – non-birthday, now – arrived.

He spent the evening beforehand pacing the lounge in the dark. Lee had gone to bed hours earlier – he’d taken a handful of sleeping pills, clearly hoping that he could knock himself out for 24 hours so he didn’t have to endure the day. Richard, of course, didn’t have that luxury, and was doomed to spend the whole time festering.

What made it worse was that his last birthday had been so amazing. It had fallen on a Friday and Lee had managed to get him the day off work, sneakily organising it with Richard’s boss (just like he had done for Lee for their trip to Paris years previously), and had whisked them away for a long outdoorsy weekend. He’d teased, on the Sunday evening (when they’d finally got home and promptly collapsed into bed, leaving all their dirty clothes and shoes on the bathroom floor), that he already had a better idea for next year, but Richard had never been able to pry any of the details out of him and now he’d never know.

But it was thoughts of hiking and camping and Lee’s sunburned cheeks and making love under the starry late summer sky that filled his mind as he hung around in the darkened room – and, without realising, he started to hum.

He was jerked from his reverie a few minutes later by rustling from the bedroom, and then panicked footsteps – and then Lee was there, in the doorway, disbelief and confusion written all over his face.

The song died in Richard’s throat.

“Lee,” he breathed, standing and hoping against hope that finally, this time –

But Lee just shook his head, his shoulders slumping, like they had done a thousand times before, every time he managed to convince himself for half a second that he had seen or heard or felt something.

“Idiot,” he muttered to himself. When he went back to bed, he burrowed right down in the blankets, pulling them over his head – presumably so that even if Richard did resume humming, he could guarantee that no part of his devious brain would pick up on it and fill him with hope, only to snuff it out yet again.

**

For the first year or so, Richard talked incessantly. He told Lee about all his favourite memories of the two of them, spanning the years (actually, spanning from the first day they’d met), the things he loved about him, the way he’d changed Richard, and everything he’d always wanted for their future.

The future that was meant to last half a century, not a handful of years.

But Lee never reacted to the running commentary, and Richard grew quieter and quieter.

Of course, he could never shut up entirely: comments would slip out, every so often, from force of habit. It was most common at the library – the two of them used to go every fortnight, and, just like always, Richard was quite unable to keep his suggestions to himself.

“You’d like this one,” he’d tell Lee, without thinking, trying to reach for the book in question and only remembering when he tried to pick it up that he couldn’t. It was saddening – but also rather irritating, at times, especially when he saw something that he knew that Lee would unquestionably love and want to read over and over again. And without being able to add the book to the pile that they were going to borrow, there was no way he could ever bring it to Lee’s attention. 

He wondered, sometimes, if he was going to lose the power of speech – if his ability to vocalise thoughts would dry up, over time, from lack of practice.

And maybe, if he hadn’t left Lee to his own devices in the library that day in favour of stretching his body over one of the wooden seats out the front and basking in the late summer sun, the answer would have been yes.

But, as it was, the sun (he could still feel it, sort of) was just too damn appealing.

He people-watched lazily for fifteen minutes or so before a middle-aged man captured his attention. In theory at least, there was nothing unusual about him – but he was singing to himself, what sounded suspiciously like an old Beatles song, loudly enough for Richard to hear from the other side of the street.

Stranger yet, no one else was reacting to it.

God, could it be – ?

He jumped off the seat and started running. (What was the worst that could happen? If he was imagining it, and the man was real and alive, then he wouldn’t notice Richard tripping over his shoes in his haste and it would be mildly embarrassing and a bit of a disappointment, but that would be all. Yes, it was unquestionably worth the risk.)

“Hey – hey! Wait!”

And the man turned around.

“Hi there,” he smiled, “how’re you doing?”

Richard just gaped, the power of eloquent speech having deserted him entirely. “You can see me.”

“Sure can,” he answered, smile not wavering in the slightest.

“You can hear me.”

“That’s generally how this works, yes.”

“What do you mean, ‘this’?”

“Being dead.”

Richard felt light-headed and wondered, for a few moments, if he was going to faint. ( _Could_ he faint?) But the man didn’t seem concerned, pressing a hand to the small of Richard’s back and guiding him to the nearest seat. It was until he was sitting down again that he realised he’d been able to feel that hand – it was warm and firm and undoubtedly alive. (Oh, it had to be another cruel trick: ghosts – and that was what they were – could touch each other, and it would feel like real human contact, but they couldn’t cross that barrier to the people they actually wanted to communicate with. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise at all.)

“I’m Frank, by the way,” the man continued, holding out that same hand for Richard to shake, “and you?”

“Richard.”

Could this conversation get any stranger?

“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Richard. So – what was it?”

“Sorry?”

“Why’d the maker come for you? Mine was a heart attack – healthy as a horse one moment, on the floor feeling like my chest was on fire the next. Not a nice way to go, let me tell you.”

Then Richard understood – Frank was asking him how he had died. Two ghosts discussing their respective deaths.

“Oh, um, shot in the chest. Walked in on a robbery. Wrong place, wrong time, I suppose.”

“My condolences,” Frank responded, “sounds terribly painful – much worse than mine. I apologise. And you’re waiting for someone too, I take it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you? And you don’t see too many folk like us roaming around, so there’s obviously some reason why you can’t go on.”

For the first time since – well, since that terrible day – Richard felt a small flicker of hope. ‘Going on’ – it sounded like he did have a future. He wasn’t going to spend eternity here alone. Lee would die, clearly, and then – well, something. He would have to see if Frank knew any further details.

“I – yeah, I suppose I am.”

“Wife? Girlfriend?”

“Boyfriend,” he admitted, feeling a surge of pride, almost wishing he could introduce the stranger to Lee – or at least point Lee out. But he’d already left the library – Richard had spotted him in the distance, a head taller than everyone else in the vicinity, carrying his books in one arm and Richard’s pea coat in the other.

Then again, it wasn’t as if they didn’t have time to make sure the one-sided introduction happened in the future.

“How about you?” he asked, wanting to deflect the attention but also to devour all the knowledge he could about this stranger, “who’s your someone?”

“My wife,” he said, a smile lighting up his face. It took ten years off his face in an instant. “Most beautiful woman to ever walk the earth.”

He stared into the middle distance for a few long seconds, clearly drawing on some happy memory, before seeming to come to and turning to Richard again.

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

He led Richard to a small, dilapidated café, well off the beaten track and only containing the smallest smattering of customers – including, in the corner, a woman in her early thirties and her grandmother. Richard couldn’t help but be slightly impressed with Frank’s apparent pulling power – the woman was gorgeous, and clearly quite a bit younger than both of them.

“That’s her,” he said softly, “that’s Nancy.”

“I can see why you’d wait around for someone like her,” Richard said encouragingly (what was the protocol in situations like this, anyway?) – but Frank just laughed. “Oh, no, Richard, you misunderstand me. That’s Rachel, my granddaughter – the eldest of my eldest. This,” he gestured to the other woman, hunched over her meal, her swollen and arthritic hands struggling to grip her fork, “is Nancy.”

Nancy was ninety if she was a day. Frank was positively spritely in comparison.

The cogs started to turn in Richard’s head, and he didn’t like the conclusions that he was reaching. “Were you… much younger than Nancy?”

Frank chuckled again. “Well, they did tease us a bit at the time, now that you mention it, but the older you get, the less a couple of years matters, hmm?”

_A couple of years._

“Frank,” he asked carefully, “when did you die?”

“October fourteenth, nineteen seventy-three. Couldn’t forget the date even if I wanted to.”

_1973._

More than forty years earlier.

He had been walking the city’s streets unseen for nearly half a century.

Richard was struck with a sudden, overwhelming horror: was he going to turn out like Frank, waiting for decades for the love of his life to die? Watching Lee grow old without him?

He couldn’t wait forty years for Lee. He would go insane. And there would be no way to escape.

“They come here every Thursday,” Frank added softly, almost happily, oblivious to Richard’s internal turmoil, “and I usually just sit and keep them company. She’s in a home, but I can’t stand it there – especially during the daytime. Though I confess that I spend most nights in the rocking chair in her room, watching her sleep. It won’t be much longer, though,” he added, with a beatific smile, “and then she’ll see me again.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s not got that long left,” he explained vaguely, leading Richard to a squashy old couch near the door, positioning himself so he could still keep an eye on Nancy and Rachel.

“She’s going to die?”

“Soon,” he agreed, with a matter of fact little nod.

“What – how can you be so sure?”

He contemplated that for a minute. “Ever touched a live wire?”

“Can’t say that I have,” Richard said, but Frank just shrugged.

“Well, there’s this feeling you get. And touching a live wire, that’s what it’s like, I suppose, but gentler, and constant. It’s this electric warmth that starts in your feet, so slowly that you barely notice it, and over time it creeps the rest of the way over your body, and it gets stronger and more intense as the day gets closer. Mine started a few years ago, but it’s picked up speed in the last few months, which means she’s getting worse. I can still only feel it up to about here, though,” he said, gesturing to his ribs, “so there’s a way still to go. But the day it first arrived was the happiest of my – well, you know.”

At that, at least, Richard bit back a laugh.

“When Lee’s about to die, I’ll feel like I’m being electrocuted. Got it.”

“You don’t have to take my word for it,” Frank said with a smile, “but trust me, the day will come when you feel it, and that’s how you’ll know. I didn’t believe them, when they told me, but,” he shrugged, “now it’s happening, and it’s wonderful.”

When _they_ told him.

“So you’ve met… others? Like me?”

Frank guffawed. “You can’t think you’re the only person in this city to have ever loved someone so much you can’t go on without them? Yes, of course there have been others. None for a couple of years, at least not that I’ve seen. So it’s nice to have a two-sided conversation again without the consequences.”

“What do you mean?” He was being awfully cryptic, and Richard was mildly irritated by the fact he had to keep repeating that question to get any answers that made sense.

“Well, haven’t you ever heard the story that children are more receptive to the supernatural?”

“It’s not a subject I ever paid much attention to, to be honest.” Now, of course, he wished that he and Lee had dedicated years to learning about it. Maybe it would have made things easier.

“Well,” Frank said with a shrug, “it’s true. Find a kindergarten and wait around there for a couple of years – you’ll find one sooner or later that can see you and hear you and wants to be your friend. Girls are more common than boys, for some reason. It always ends up causing problems, but it’s nice while it lasts.”

“What sort of problems?”

“Well, picture this: your daughter comes home from kindergarten and tells you about the man she spent the day playing with. But when you go and ask, they tell you – with a confused expression, because you know this already – that there are no men on the staff, not least one that spent the better part of four hours sitting next to her in the sandpit. So you ask her about it, and she describes the man, and no one has any idea who he is. You wonder if he’s an imaginary friend – but it’s an odd friend to have, isn’t it? An old man who could be her grandfather? So you start to worry that it’s some deep-seated psychological issue – who knows what, but you can’t help it – and you take her to see various therapists and doctors in an attempt to find out what’s wrong with her. And the whole time, the man can’t bring himself to stay away, because when he does, she cries herself to sleep. She reminds him of his grandchildren, and it feels so good to be able to interact with someone living and breathing, real flesh and blood, and make them smile and laugh and _react._ And it’s terribly selfish of him but he just has to keep coming back – no matter the cost for her.”

The way Frank spoke told Richard that this was in no way a hypothetical. No, this had definitely happened to him, possibly more than once.

And yet Richard was entirely unable to offer any words of comfort whatsoever, because his mind had stuck on the first two words of Frank’s tale.

_Your daughter._

And god, were those two words an excruciating reminder of everything he’d lost.

It was something he and Lee had talked about, on and off, after they’d been together for a couple of years and independently concluded that they were never going to want anyone or anything other than each other. But the discussions had always ended on the same note: _one day._

And now that day was never going to come.

Richard had never doubted that he wanted to raise children with Lee, or that Lee would be an amazing father. He knew it from watching him play with his sisters’ kids – both Jen’s, who were all school age, and Nic’s twin toddlers – and the way that they gravitated towards him when he and Richard came to stay during the holidays, wanting to show him their new toys and play wrestle and have him swing them around and ride on his shoulders.

It was the Christmas before Richard died that he had realised the time had come.

Nic’s daughters, Emily and Olivia, had commandeered Lee for the whole day – starting at six, when they threw themselves onto his sleeping form demanding pancakes for breakfast. They had spent hours running him ragged, hurtling between inside and outside, while Richard relaxed and laughed at his frazzled expression.

But at about five in the evening, Richard realised that things had gone very, very quiet – and that was almost never a good thing. Quiet, with these two, usually meant mayhem, the kind that no one would discover until much later (like making potions with everything they could find in the bathroom or deciding that the plain bedside cabinet could do with some colourful detailing or unplugging all the cables from the TV and knotting them together in impenetrable braids).

He tiptoed around the house looking for them, but they were nowhere to be found – not until he peeked into his and Lee’s room and realised that the bed was occupied.

It was the sweetest, most picture-perfect scene he had seen in all his life.

Lee was flat on his back, his mouth slightly open and hair all rumpled. His arms were outstretched and curled around the twins, who had tucked themselves into his embrace, their cheeks resting on his upper chest in perfect mirror images of each other.

All three of them were fast asleep.

Something warm and unexpected bloomed in Richard’s chest, an all-encompassing paternal yearning that left him giddy and light-headed.

And he just _knew._

When they got home in the New Year, he’d started doing some very preliminary investigating. He hadn’t raised the matter again with Lee, though, wanting to have all his ducks in a row before he did so, wanting to tell him that he was ready – _so ready_ – and they could do this, together, and they should do it now.

But then he’d died before he got the chance.

And now that dream, like so many others, had been left in the dust – or, more specifically, in the ashes, perched high on the bookshelf and waiting.

“I have to go,” he blurted, jumping off the couch as though it had bitten him. Frank just gave him a smile in concession – he’d been around for forty years, so he had to be used to people reacting like this to his words by now, and he had to know what had triggered Richard’s sudden about-turn. “You know where to find me,” he agreed, and Richard just nodded, stumbling blindly out the door, his mind whirling. He was still stuck on the bittersweet thought of him and Lee and kids and a cat and a dog and a big old house outside the city and _forever_ – but, even so, the rest of Frank’s words were slowly but surely sinking in.

They made him wonder.

_What if, what if, what if?_

Unable to help himself, he’d spent a month or two roaming the streets looking for kindergartens and parks – anywhere that small children would be likely to congregate. But no matter how much he tried to draw attention to himself, none of them ever reacted, so he tried his best to dismiss Frank’s comments, putting them down to a small miracle that he would never experience himself.

And then Lee’s sister came to visit.

It was hardly the first time, of course – but this time, Nic had brought the girls, clearly having finally deemed Lee stable enough to see them. It was also the first time Richard met Rebecca, the latest addition to the family. She’d not been a twinkle in her parents’ eyes when he died, and yet here she was, three months old, wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep against Nic’s chest.

Richard wished Nic would visit more often, since she only lived a couple of hours’ drive away – but with a workaholic husband and three under-fives, he couldn’t really begrudge her not being able to find the time.

Emily and Olivia, the twins, made a beeline for the guest bedroom as soon as they arrived – Richard had made sure there was a drawer full of paper, colouring books and pens for them before they were even old enough to entertain themselves, and they would happily occupy themselves in there for hours.

That, of course, left Nic free to ask Lee the hard questions without being overheard (except, of course, by Richard, squeezed into the small gap between Lee and the arm of the couch.)

“How are you doing?”

“I wish I was dead.” He was so matter-of-fact about it, like it was a feeling that he knew wasn’t going to go away and that he’d just come to accept.

Maybe it was.

“Please don’t,” she pleaded, and Lee managed a wan attempt at a smile. “Sorry.”

“How was the ceremony?” 

Immediately, his face caved in again.

“Fucking awful.”

Richard’s story had been all over the news, of course, and after Ethan had been sentenced, city officials had started making noises about giving him a posthumous award for bravery. Lee had laughed bitterly when the first letter came before striking a match and holding it to the corner of the paper, dropping it into the kitchen sink and letting it turn to ash in front of him.

But they kept writing – and later calling – and Lee had finally given in, agreeing to attend one of those job lot ceremonies where the city recognised a selection of People Who Had Been Brave Recently to accept the award on Richard’s behalf. Even after all of that, it had taken a surprisingly long time for them to actually set a date, and it didn’t occur until nearly eighteen months after he’d actually made the foolish sacrifice in the first place.

Richard hadn’t gone – he hadn’t been able to bring himself to. The funeral had been one thing – at least all his friends and colleagues were there – but this was a Wednesday morning and the only contingent turning out for him would be Lee, along with Carla and her family. That in itself would be terrible – Richard knew that Lee had gone out of his way to avoid both the shop and Carla since his death. Then again, it wasn’t as if he could have told her not to come.

And so Lee had gone to the ceremony with a face like thunder (they would discover later that all of the official pictures had been virtually unusable) but, as Richard realised afterwards, it was because he wouldn’t have been able to hold it together in public otherwise.

When he got home, he slammed the door so hard that the whole building shook – and then he screamed, hurling the little box with the medal against the far wall with such force that it left a dent.

“You fucking idiot, Richard,” he roared at the empty apartment, more furious than Richard had ever seen him.

He had been surprised, when he first read the letter over Lee’s shoulder, that throwing himself on a kid with a gun – who _almost certainly wasn’t even going to use it_ – merited an award, other than of the Darwin variety.

Lee apparently shared those sentiments.

“Why did you have to do this to me?” he wailed, spinning around and slamming his fist into the wall over and over until he was breathing harshly and his knuckles were bloody and purpling – and then his whole body just collapsed, listing towards the wall until his forehead was pressed against it.

The sight was hopelessness personified, and Richard wished more than ever that he could go back to that March morning and make his choices over again.

“Here,” Nic suggested, passing Rebecca over, knowing that holding her would anchor Lee and give him something to distract himself with. And, sure enough, he took her with that wondering face Richard had seen him wear every time he was confronted with a baby this small, stroking one finger over her tiny fist as she moved slightly and then opened her eyes. She blinked slowly, gazing around the room before something – someone – caught her attention, and a wide beam split her face.

But she wasn’t looking at Lee.

She was looking at Richard.

There was no doubt about it.

Disbelieving, he choked on a gasp and then returned her smile, which grew even bigger in response.

“What do you think she’s looking at?” Lee asked, and Nic just shrugged. “She’s a happy baby. She smiles a lot. I think that’s a personal best, though.”

Richard wanted to cry, but – just like every other time – he couldn’t.

“But – hey, don’t change the topic on me. I don’t need all the details, but… was it fitting? The ceremony?”

Richard had already experienced the full force of Lee’s feelings when it came to the award, and had no desire to do so again – so he stood stiffly and walked away, heading down the hall to lie on their bed and reminisce. But the bedroom was already occupied by two little girls lying on the rug at the foot of the bed.

Two little girls who – as he stood in the doorway and watched them, marvelling at how much they’d grown – looked up at him.

Not _through_ him – _at_ him.

“Hi,” he said softly – wondering, wondering –

“Hi,” they echoed obligingly, both eyeing him with no small measure of curiosity.

“Would you like to colour in with us?” Em asked politely, proffering one of the books, but Richard shook his head with a smile, since he wouldn’t be able to hold the pen.

“No, thank you. I’ll just watch.”

But – just like Frank had said – he just couldn’t help himself.

“How’s school?”

They had to remember him – Richard thought that Nic would be horrified if they readily shared this much detail with a complete stranger. But he soaked it up, unable to keep the smile off his face as they told him about their new teacher – they’d only started a couple of months previously – and their favourite things and the class pet goldfish and Nic and their dog and how Rebecca cried a lot at night and everything else under the sun like an unstoppable fountain of information. All the while, he listened for the low hum of Lee’s voice from the lounge, making sure that they weren’t going to be interrupted.

It was more than an hour – one lovely, lazy, thoroughly _normal_ hour – when it happened, and it didn’t come as a surprise. He had been keeping half an eye on the clock for the last ten minutes, knowing that it was coming, but still unable to get a word in edgeways.

“Emily, Olivia! Books away now,” Nic called down the hall. Richard recognised that tone – it meant that they were about to leave.

And his window – the most miniscule of chances he had to communicate in some way with Lee – was closing fast.

“Hey,” he said frantically to the girls as they packed up the books and pens, carrying them back to the guest bedroom and putting them back into the drawer, “how is Uncle Lee doing?”

“Mommy says he’s very sad,” Emily offered, and Richard nodded, the neutrality in her tone a sharp pain in his gut.

“That just means you’re going to have to be extra nice to him. Do you think you can do that?”

He received two solemn little nods in return.

“Give him lots of hugs, okay?”

Two more nods.

“And tell him – tell him,” he floundered (god, why hadn’t he thought about this more over the last hour?), “tell him I’m always with him.”

“Hurry up, girls,” Nic called again. Emily closed the drawer, and Richard followed them back down the hall. When their backs were turned, he slipped into the lounge, ducking down behind the couch so he could see but not be seen.

Thankfully, no one noticed Rebecca’s eyes tracking him across the room.

“Say goodbye to Uncle Lee, okay? We’re going home now.”

The girls shared a thoughtful look for half a second before diving on him, each wrapping their arms around one of his legs.

“What brought this on, hmm?” Lee asked gently, but Richard could tell he was touched (and starved of physical affection, if the hitch in his breathing was anything to go by).

Olivia’s words were muffled against his leg and he sank to the ground, pulling both of them into his lap and letting them cling to him in silence for nearly a minute – a long, ticking minute, Richard feeling that all-too-familiar pressure in his nose. “What was that, Livvy?”

“The man said we should give you lots of hugs.”

The blood drained from Lee’s face. It was remarkable – he went from pink with pleasure to the colour of concrete in the space of less than a second.

“Which man?” he croaked, his hands visibly trembling, tightening around the girls until they started to squirm with discomfort.

“The man in the bedroom.”

Rebecca let out a wail of protest as Nic ran down the hallway and into the bedroom. Richard heard her opening the wardrobe door and then closing it again before she checked the guest bedroom, and then the bathroom, finally reappearing with a shake of her head.

“There’s no one there.”

But the twins just nodded emphatically. “There was a man.”

“Okay… Do you know who he was?”

They both nodded again, this time in concession, and Lee and Nic shared a confused glance. “Who was he, baby?”

Neither answered verbally, but Emily pointed wordlessly to the large framed photo hanging by the door.

A photo of Lee and Richard.

The change in Nic was instantaneous. “Don’t say things like that, Emily. Come on, we’re leaving. Put your shoes on, girls.”

“But he said –”

“ _Now,_ Olivia.”

They reluctantly untwined themselves from Lee, leaving him slumped against the wall, incapacitated and boneless, until Nic reached out a hand to pull him up.

“I’m so sorry,” she told him, wrapping him in a hug of her own, “I’ll have a talk to them when we get home. I don’t know where that came from.”

It was patently obvious that Lee wanted to talk to the girls – ask them more about the man and what he’d said, and hopefully coax out the message that Richard had tried to give them – but Nic’s face was so closed off that he didn’t even try. Instead, as soon as they’d said their goodbyes, he practically slammed the door and ran back to the bedroom, staring around for a long moment. He paused, thinking, then shook his head and bent down to check under the bed. When he stood again, he was blushing, obviously concluding that he was an idiot.

“Richard,” he said tentatively, “Rich?”

“I’m here, love,” he breathed, stepping forward and brushing his hands over Lee’s shoulders, a feather-light touch. If the kids could see him, then despite what Frank had said, maybe something was changing, and maybe –

But Lee just stared through him, glassy-eyed, gaze darting around the room hopefully.

No – it was just more of the same.

“Baby – if you’re here, if you can hear me, give me a sign. I don’t care what sort of sign. Just – I need to know.”

“Lee,” he shouted, repeating the name over and over, louder each time until his throat was raw and his voice was hoarse. And yet – nothing.

Lee bowed his head in defeat, stepping backwards until his back was against the wall and then sliding down it so he was sitting on the floor. He drew his legs up towards his chest, wrapped his arms around them and rested his forehead on his knees.

The tears, this time, were silent.

The only thing that gave matters away was the way that every breath he drew was accompanied by a full-bodied shudder, the last gasp of a drowning man.

And he was drowning – to Richard, at least, that much was painfully clear.

And the guilt was excruciating.

It was all his fault. Everything was his fault. He was going to have to live with that fact for the rest of eternity – or, at the very least, until Lee died, when he hoped that he would be able to apologise enough times for Lee to perhaps begin to forgive him.

**

It was nearly three years after his death that Richard experienced a small miracle.

It had been a standard evening – Lee making himself a sad dinner for one (he’d lost all interest in cooking in the space of about two months after Richard’s death, and ever since had favoured omelettes and bulk pasta bakes rather than the elaborate masterpieces he used to dream up and create) and putting himself to bed early, while Richard prowled the apartment. He hadn’t heard Lee get up to go to the bathroom, which was why he was more than a little surprised to walk into him – literally – on his way back to bed.

What was even more surprising, though, was Lee’s reaction.

Specifically, that he reacted at all – but astonishingly, at the collision, his face froze into an expression of disbelief, and he stopped breathing.

Richard would have too, if he’d been breathing in the first place.

It had never happened like this before – maybe it was the fact that Lee was still skirting that needle-thin line between asleep and awake that made him more receptive to Richard’s presence. And when Richard wrapped his arms around Lee’s waist, he sighed – a tiny, almost relieved sound.

And then he said it – no more than a whisper, but he said it.

“Rich.”

His eyes slipped closed, a small, grateful smile on his lips, and Richard squeezed tighter, choking back a gasp of euphoria.

During his twice-weekly chats with Frank, roaming the city streets and exchanging stories about Nancy and Lee and the lives they’d shared, he had never mentioned anything like this – but it was happening anyway.

“I’m right here, Lee. I’ll never leave you.”

Lee didn’t answer, but the words kept pouring out of Richard’s mouth anyway, burbling variations on a theme, on the off chance that something would somehow sink in.

“I love you. I’m sorry. It’s all going to be okay.”

They stood there for one long, exquisite minute, Richard wishing it would continue forever, until Lee straightened up and shook his head as if coming out of a trance, the blissful smile disappearing from his face.

And just like that, the moment was over.

Richard jumped onto his side of the bed as Lee did the same, flopping onto his back and staring at the ceiling, arms folded behind his head as he sighed, still not quite awake.

“This isn’t getting any easier, Richard,” he told the silent room, the words thick with sleep, and Richard cringed at the admission.

“I know, love,” he soothed, reaching over to comb his fingers through his hair – but this time, he didn’t react at all.

Yes, well and truly over.

The only upside was the fact that he had the rest of Lee’s natural life to try and replicate it.

He did, successfully, a handful of times, but always by accident. Lee would react exactly the same way, whispering his name and sinking into a phantom embrace until he came to. He would never quite remember in the morning – he would usually wake with a hint of a smile on his lips, but it would crease into a frown as he tried to reach for what he initially thought was a memory but was obviously just a dream and nothing more.

And it wasn’t enough – for either of them.

It was never enough.

And even Richard started to wonder if it was time for Lee to start to move on. 

He watched his friends set him up with other men – he couldn’t help but feel grateful that they were trying their best to help, reaching out to Lee when he was incapable of making the effort himself and after he objectively should be starting to consider a new relationship. But, at the same time, it was the oddest of sensations to sit at an empty table and watch Lee attempt to date.

The record was three or four – a blonde architect with sun-kissed skin and warm brown eyes that Lee seemed to be learning to get lost in – and Richard had had a good feeling about it. So had Lee, if the growing genuineness of his smile and strengthening attempts at flirtation were anything to go by.

But when James kissed him for the first time after walking him home, it had only lasted a couple of seconds before Lee pushed him away.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, “I thought I was ready, but…”

James understood. Of course he did. He was a friend of one of Richard’s friends; he wouldn’t be anything other than a gentleman. So he’d hugged Lee, told him to give him a call if he ever changed his mind, and left him standing in the doorway as his face crumpled with grief.

He didn’t sleep at all that night, sobbing himself hoarse and clinging to Richard’s pillow like it was Richard himself. Richard, in turn, curled up against his back and wished, more than ever, that he was more substantial; that if he held Lee, Lee would feel it – and know.

But no matter how hard he wished, it never happened.

And so he waited.

God, he waited.

Time had ceased to have meaning. He only knew how long it had been since he died because every morning, when Lee got up, he would remind himself.

“Six days.”

“Twenty-three days.”

“Three hundred and eighty-two days.”

“Seven hundred and thirty-four days.”

“One thousand, four hundred and seventeen days.”

“One thousand, eight hundred and forty-four days.”

That day – the one thousand, eight hundred and forty-fourth day – was when everything changed.

Even if that change came as a complete surprise to both of them.

Frank had told him that he would grow stronger as Lee aged and came closer to death, but it hadn’t happened yet. It was a constant source of dread, a hard lump at the base of his throat, to know that Lee remained healthy. He was pleased, in a way – of course he was – that he was doing okay, but a small (fine, large) part of him was anxiously anticipating the day when he felt that first prickling surge of energy.

And he had no one to talk to about it anymore.

He hadn’t seen Frank for nearly two years, but he knew why. During one of his strolls around the cemetery (Frank had taken him there every so often), he’d ended up at a familiar headstone – only to find that it now had a shiny new twin inscribed with Nancy’s name. More than forty years on, she and Frank had finally met again. Richard hoped desperately that the reunion was everything he’d talked it up to be during that painfully long wait.

That morning, he’d joined Lee for a quiet brunch, tucked into the corner of one of their old haunts with a book and a melancholy smile, Richard’s pea coat lovingly folded next to him. It had been quiet, of course, because he wasn’t aware that he had company, Richard sitting in the empty chair on the other side of the table and watching him. When they’d come here together, Lee had always ordered pancakes with lashings of maple syrup, chastising Richard with a grin for being healthy and ordering avocado on toast and then laughing whenever he tried to sneak a bite off Lee’s plate.

He hadn’t stopped coming here in the years after Richard’s death, but he’d never ordered the pancakes again.

He had changed in other ways over the years, too. It had largely happened slowly – at least, it seemed that way to Richard, who spent so much time trailing after him everywhere he went – the main exception being the weight that had dropped off in the weeks following the funeral. Lee had barely eaten, and it had shown ever since, his bones just that fraction more prominent, skin stretched over a slightly more concave stomach. He’d grown his beard out, too – Richard had previously never seen him with anything more than a few days’ stubble, and yet he hadn’t shaved properly since Richard had been alive. Lee suited the beard, there was no denying it, but Richard had had a feeling that after the initial phase of grieving where personal grooming was nigh on impossible, he had decided to keep it around because the rough rasp reminded him of Richard. That feeling was only confirmed by the numerous occasions when he had found Lee stroking it mindlessly, letting his eyes slip closed as he did so.

Richard wasn’t a self-important man – but no, he was sure that in those moments in particular, Lee was thinking of him.

Just like he was sure that the only reason he ever came back to this café for brunch was to reminisce on what should have lasted forever.

He ducked under Lee’s outstretched arm as he pushed the café door open after finishing his meal, and hovered patiently as he reached for his headphones, plugging them back into his phone and pressing the buds into his ears. He smiled at the song that started playing at random and Richard leaned in, pressing his ear against Lee’s and catching enough of the song for him to identify it as one of his old favourites.

Lee turned the volume up, tucking the phone back into his pocket as he did so, and stepped out to cross the street.

A wave of adrenaline and terror crashed over Richard seconds before he could articulate the reason for it – and then, with one glance down the street, he knew.

God help him, he knew.

In that instant, he acted unconsciously. He didn’t want Lee to get hurt. He never had. And if he had the chance to save him, even if it meant more painful years of waiting, he would take it without thinking twice.

So he lunged for him.

But – and once he thought about it, he realised it probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise – it didn’t make a blind bit of difference.

The heavy fabric of the coat didn’t slip through his fingers so much as his fingers slipped through the fabric, and he was left – as he had been so many times before – grasping ineffectually for Lee as he stepped out unknowingly into the path of the car.

He ricocheted off the front bumper and flew backwards through the air almost gracefully, meeting the pavement in a tangle of limbs that was, for some reason, much louder than Richard would have expected. 

He would have run to him, but he couldn’t.

Because a second after the impact, his legs gave out, knees buckling with the overwhelming surge of energy that swept from his feet to the top of his head, igniting every dead nerve ending en route leaving him feeling, incredibly, almost like he was coming back to life.

And he finally understood what Frank had been talking about.

Oh, god.

It was happening. It was really happening.

He stood back as concerned passers-by swarmed Lee, shouting about ambulances and not moving him and keeping him awake, concentrating on the current shooting up his spine and exploding at the base of his skull like fireworks. His limbs were tingling and trembling uncontrollably and his vision was fading in and out and suddenly Frank’s comparison to being electrocuted seemed rather apt.

But it had happened gradually for him, because Nancy was never going to die of anything other than old age. Lee’s death – and that had to be what this was – had snuck up on both of them, with no time for Richard’s body to prepare itself, so he was getting what had to be several years’ worth of that feeling crammed into a handful of explosive minutes.

When he could finally focus again, the panic that had initially surrounded Lee had given way to a mix of frustration, confusion and worry – because someone had unbuttoned his shirt and they’d found that goddamn tattoo.

He remembered the day that Lee had got it like it was yesterday. He had all but gone into a trance, his eyes closed and a small smile playing on his lips, as Craig had done the piece. He hadn’t even flinched. Of course, Richard knew that he would get through it – he would have suffered anything in silence if there was a chance that it would bring them together again.

And it was clearly going to do just that, because the group was roughly split between wanting to honour it and wanting to ignore it, and that argument was buying Lee precious time.

Even without the electricity rolling through his body, the colour of Lee’s face and the sticky warmth spreading out from behind his head and the unnatural angles of his limbs told him that he was close.

Still wearing the smallest of smiles, Lee closed his eyes.

And Richard remembered a time when, five years ago, he’d done exactly the same thing – because it had changed everything.

Something – not his heart, since that had been dormant for nearly half a decade now – hammering in his chest, he stepped into the light.

Lee opened his eyes again – and Richard just knew.

This was it.

Because for the first time since that mild Thursday morning in March half a decade ago, Lee was looking not _through_ him but _at_ him.

He should have been more prepared for this moment – he’d had years to rehearse it, after all – but the look in Lee’s eyes left him quite at a loss for words. So, in the end, he just blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“I can’t believe you got a tattoo.”

And Lee heard him. God, he heard him.

Because he smiled.

And then he replied.

“Hey, it did what it was meant to,” he croaked, blinking disbelievingly as he spoke, as though he was worried that Richard was going to disappear any moment. “I mean – that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he admitted, and the relief emanating from Lee was so tangible that he was sure he could have touched it. “But… didn’t it hurt?”

Christ, Richard, he chastised himself, stop asking about the tattoo. There are a thousand things more important than the tattoo right now. Shut up, and tell him that you’re sorry and you love him.

“Not nearly as much as everything else,” Lee said in a small voice that in any other circumstances would have made him wince – but he couldn’t, not now, because Lee was looking at him and hearing him and actually responding to things he said and god, he had been waiting for this moment for years and suddenly it was finally here. He inched closer and bent down, basking in Lee’s relieved, beaming smile – the one he hadn’t seen since the day he died.

On second thoughts, speaking could wait.

Lee reached for his hand and Richard couldn’t help but mimic the movement because this time, after so long, Lee was going to be able to touch him – and feel it.

And he did.

Their fingers fitted together as perfectly as they had done since that first night, the warmth and softness of Lee’s hands and the jut of his knuckles somehow achingly familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. He’d spent years clinging to the memory of Lee’s skin, cursing the lack of sensation that his own useless hands both had and gave – and now they were here and this was real and happening and it was everything he’d ever wanted since that March morning and finally, finally, everything was going to be okay.

He would have cried, if he could. This moment, perhaps more than any other over the past five years, merited tears.

There were so many things they would need to talk about – specifically, the fact that Richard had been lurking in the shadows of his life for half a decade – but he didn’t need to say them now.

Yes, save for the feeling of Lee’s warm hand in his and the love and devotion in his eyes, everything could wait.

They had forever, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Good christ this has taken a long time, I apologise. I hope that the obscene length makes up for it (this is starting to get out of control now... especially since a) this was only meant to be a short companion piece from Richard's POV and b) it is almost double the length of DNR. Welp.)
> 
> But but but let me know what you think? Kudos and comments are veeeery much appreciated!
> 
> A particularly large and effusive thank you to the wonderful Laurelin for inspiring me and letting me wail at you for the last several weeks... Couldn't have written it without you :)
> 
> Tumblr is toutcequejesuispas so come say hiiiii.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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